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Angry Birds Exec Says Console Games Are Dying
RedEaredSlider writes "Angry Birds marketing lead Peter Vesterbacka went on the offensive today against his console counterparts, arguing that the model pursued by companies like Nintendo is 'dying.' In a panel discussion at the South by Southwest Interact conference in Austin, Texas, Vesterbacka said that innovation wasn't coming from large development firms like EA and Ubisoft, but from smaller, more nimble developers like his own. Vesterbacka also pointed to the major concern over the price model for console games. Compared to mobile titles like Angry Birds that run for 99 cents, games on large consoles hover around fifty dollars. Still, the executive did admit that the business model for mobile games had yet to be completely figured out."
Executive of company that produces games for one platform says that another platform is old hat, and will die out.
I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
The market penetration of game consoles has been decreasing ever since the 80's.
And now smartphones are taking over. Only caveat is they market is even more fragmented as consoles were in the mid 80's. In those days there was basically one major console at a time. Now we have many smartphone OSes and handsets at a time.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Angry birds is not innovation. It's the best of a mediocre selection.
He talks about how "innovation wasn't coming from large development firms like EA and Ubisoft, but from smaller, more nimble developers like his own.".... yet, angry birds is an obvious rip off of another game, Crush the Castle, which was developed by Armor Games quite some time before A.B. Try it out for yourself... http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle
It's not what you know. It's not who you know. It's what you know about who you know.
I'm not going to debate that mobile gaming has the potential to be a hugely lucrative market, but going all Khrushchev and trumpeting the demise of another medium is just gauche. It doesn't do anything but make console 'pundits' look stupid year after year, and it certainly won't help this guy.
But kids will always want some DS or PSP experience, and hardcore gamers will want advanced PC only games. XBox, Playstation, yeah, nothing looks interesting there.
I'll pay 50 bucks for a game like Black Ops any day of the week.
That is of course for the PC version, the console market has never made any sense to me.
What part of that game is innovative?
But more importantly, innovation in entertainment is overrated. Games don't have to be innovative all the time. Quite often people want a similar experience as they had with a previous game: brand new story and environments, but similar gameplay.
I remember playing with banana-flinging gorillas in the early nineties. By the late nineties, I remember playing a catapult game where the target would collapse according to a fairly decent physics engine. Where's the innovation, exactly?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I think that big companies like EA and Ubisoft being uninnovative predates the mobile platforms by many, many years. The growth of casual gaming (which is what suits the small mobile devices) will not cut too deeply into the console market.
Mobile gaming does not compete too much with consoles because:
1) they are played at a time when you are away from home
2) they are priced so low that they don't eat too much into the gaming budget. You do not have to stop buying console games to be able to afford to buy games for your phone.
Does NetCraft confirm it?
I am mostly a PC gamer, but I fail to understand how consoles are going to be killed by mobile game companies when they both focus on two totally different markets. Mobile games such as Angry Birds cater to casual gamers.
But unless the article was specifically about handheld consoles (which I found no indication of), you surely wouldn't want to play Angy Birds on an XBOX 360 or a Wii with 1080p screen. And you surely won't and can't meaningfully play Crysis on a mobile phone.
And the consoles are evolving too, no wonder there is so much buzz around the Kinnect and even casual gamers are excited by it and have found it useful.
There are several downloadable games (I can only speak for the Wii) that can be bought for $15 or less. It is not $50 for all games.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
This 1$ app/game business is creating and will continue to create many one hit wonders. Until this guy consistently makes more successful games, what he says is not relevant. Especially what he says about Nintendo.
They probably said the same thing about film when TV came out. It's just a different experience. The console gamers aren't moving to game on their phones, but you can bet that the phones have introduced a whole pile of people to gaming. Maybe, in the future, they will look to buy a real console, and play a 20-30 hour game, instead of a $2 game for 90 seconds at a time.
"Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata went on the offensive today against his smartphone counterparts, arguing that the model pursued by individuals like Peter Vesterbacka is 'dying.' In a panel discussion at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Iwata said that innovation wasn't coming from independent game coders, but from large and established companies like his own. Iwata also pointed to the major concern over the price model for smartphone games. Compared to games on established consoles, which hover around fifty dollars, mobile titles like Angry Birds run for 99 cents and make their developers little money due to the policies of online app stores. At these price points, "there's no motivation [for] high-value video games," Iwata said. Still, the executive did admit that the business model for console games had yet to be completely figured out."
Okay, not exactly, but Iwata-san did say something against smartphones at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, a mere 13 days ago.
Aside from Interfaces, Graphics and Physics Gimmicks (which, given they are based in real world physics, isn't really anything "new" so much as innovative only in its choice of medium), Video Games will always fall short in Innovation to tabletop gaming. The fact all you need is some friends, a brain and some paper/pencils to create a masterpiece will ensure that no great game idea will be stifled by such trivial matters as processing power, the ability to program or simply the ability to render graphics in a way that fits the themes and flavors of your game. Even Settlers started out using photographs. The freedom of using brains instead of computers creates an unparalleled advantage. Heck, most RPGs on computers still use experience points, levels and classes or power trees--how antiquated is that? RPGs have (mostly) evolved past that back in the mid-nineties and are almost all point-buy (with the exception of Dungeons and Dragons, which has a legacy to maintain).
I will admit, however,
A marketing executive said something. Big deal! Sales and marketing people are the ones that cause us the most pain every day because of their lack of common sense.
But they're the ones that pitched (and sold) the idea of Mario Party: Swingers Edition to Nintendo.
Yeah I have one game that made it big. I know everything about the market.
That's why they are pushing Angry Birds onto consoles and PC's then.
Angry birds is past it's sell by date it's had a decent run considering how basic it is but it's now even the dimwitted are bored of it.
This is commit from a guy who's company has made one game, with the oldest idea ever, and now continues to push out versions of the same old idea in different uniforms (Angry Birds Seasons etc). Yeah, real innovation at Rovio. A pure one-hit wonder that sickens me. There was multiple catapult games years before AB, albeit not with green pigs.
"Creator of angry birds gets some free publicity for angry birds"
Does this silly CEO really thinks we are expecting to play the same time of games on a small 3" screen as the one we play on a full HD screen? Come on, this is a different market, and the 2 are non exclusive. Players on big TV with PS3 might in fact play ALSO on their phone. It's not because A.B. is a success that they should spit on everyone else.
Most people just want to pick up a game to play casually, and $50 is far too much to invest for something like that...
Many games are also not worth anything close to that price, a lot of games today are just minor tweaks to other games, and yet they expect you to splash out a full $50 again?
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Problem is that more 'computers' these days are really consoles. A console (at least to me) is a piece of hardware that can do functions limited to what the hardware provider allows (think like the Nintendo Seal of Approval). Consoles have always been about what was made for them at the consoles makers approval and things like the iphone and the ipad are the same thing. They are really consoles hiding under the name of computer something. While consoles have typically been used for games they havent truely been limited to that since the psx and its inclusion of its cd audio player. In short. No consoles arent dying. They are being renamed as 'mobile devices' to appeal to a wider audeince and seem 'more serious'
1) there are a good dozen of game engines (console or pc) around that get updated and licensed to others... ...
2) if a cool idea for a game can't be wrapped into one or another of those engines it isn't deemed profitable and more often abandoned than let's say 10-15 years ago...
3)
4) absolute boredom... choosing between GTA'ish game #12312351, GT'ish game #243526 and the whole EA-FIFA-NHL-BLA game shit #243458924356...
there are still cool games... but people don't know them because the studio behind them is too small.. or they don't fit what is known to make profit... (GTA'ish game #12312351, GT'ish game #243526 and the whole EA-FIFA-NHL-BLA game shit #243458924356...)
but as i can see companies are already in trouble.. there will be some casualities before the market comes to senses and cool ideas get the respect they deserve again... we had that in the mid-eighties in the console market.. and later in the pc gaming market... now both suck..
i was lucky to find Quake III:Arena.. a game that i am stuck to for years now... and nothing else... i'll just wait what happens to the other stuff watching from that isle...
Angry Birds and other arcade-style junk will never, *ever* replace series like The Legend of Zelda. Just sayin'.
There may be a bit of truth in what the man has to say.
Games were $50-$60 each in the 1980s on game consoles and the PCs of the time. Over a hundred bucks a game in today's money.
So games HAVE gotten cheaper over the years.
Moreover, there is a much larger market for games than there ever was. Many more people own some kind of game playing device, whether that be a console, a PC, or a smartphone.
And finally, in the 1980s and 1990s, games had to be delivered through a middleman - a publisher, then a retail store, and so on.
A larger market for games means that the per unit cost of a game can be lower for the same development budget for the game. No reason the Angry birds team could not have spent millions of dollars on the game, or at least the next game in the series.
And because the middlemen are mostly gone, the Angry birds teams gets a solid 70% of each sale. To some, that may sound like Apple gets a large cut - but in reality, that's a smaller piece of the pie eaten by the middle man (Apple) than there ever was before.
The market penetration of game consoles has been decreasing ever since the 80's.
Subject says it all. Show me the report that suggest the NES sold through more consoles than the PS2, and then we'll talk. Show me the report that suggest more people owned a single Gaming Console in the 80s than do in the 00s and then we'll talk. Back that up with ANYTHING, and then we'll talk.
Back in the 80s the closest thing to a real computer that most people could even barely afford was the Atari 2600 which was a console device. At the time I really wished that I could have had a "real" computer but my parents couldn't afford it and I was too young to work. Now people actually argue about the virtues of consoles over computers. There shouldn't even be an argument there. Anyone who thinks a console is somehow "better" than a PC should probably not be around computers at all.
Well, I wouldn't compare angry birds to Crysis 2, if he doesn't see this as being the reason for the value difference he is an idiot. I could hire a coder online to make the game angry birds out of my own pocket on some hire a coder website. However the big boys who are selling their games for over 99 cents have a production team and are very good at what they do.
Lets also not forget to take in to account the fact that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have had years of experience creating developer kits, and many of the seasoned game developers are already familiar with how their developer kits run. Google and Apple have not had the same experience handing out developer kits. At least not ones that have turned their products in to a success. I believe that the software quality is way behind what the hardware can do on todays phones.
There is something that a smart phone will never be able to do anytime soon, and that is do multi-player the correct way, people like to interact with each other and while some phone games offer multi-player it will be ages before they get it right with the software, hardware, and network.
he's repeating a really wrong and really dangerous, from a business stand point, notion that total market share and numbers of users dominates, it doesn't. At the end of the day, profits dominate. Rovio isn't going to see the same numbers EA or Konami or Capcom or Bethesda will. Bar none.
He's right that yes, there are way more people playing casual games, but the market for non casual games is going up.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The existence of mainstream casual and blockbuster video games is a fairly new development, but both types of games are part of the overall medium.
As was the case with other forms of media over the past 150 years or so, video games are going to start to become more diverse. Up until fairly recently it wasn't entirely nonsensical to simply say "I play video games." Today, though, that doesn't mean anything. One may as well say "I read books."
This is an exciting time for video games as a medium -- it's become a genuinely mainstream medium. That doesn't mean its less mainstream aspects will die. There's room for all types. People watch TV shows and feature-length films. People read short stories and epic trilogies. People play casual, simplistic or linear games, they play esoteric, deep or complex games, and they will do all of this on a wide variety of platforms in a wide variety of situations.
How many of the people who used to play Solitaire and Minesweeper are now playing Angry Birds? In other words, casual games are just more visible now that they are being marketed separately.
Vesterbacka also pointed to the major concern over the price model for console games. Compared to mobile titles like Angry Birds that run for 99 cents, games on large consoles hover around fifty dollars.
Yes. In the same way that I can get a Ford Focus for £16k, but a Bugatti Veyron SS will set me back ~£1.25m.
It's ludicrous to argue that things with totally different development costs, marketing costs, distribution costs, target audiences and, let's not forget, content are priced differently and that this is somehow bad for the more expensive thing.
He's a marketing shill guys! Its his job to troll on games/platforms that his company doesnt develop for. Show me a competent developer(read: can/will develop for any platform) with the same opinion and I might start to believe it. Such a jack of all trades might not exist, but if they did they could accept work from Rovio on a mobile platform just as soon as they could accept work from WB on the next epic Mortal Kombat title. IMO this guy is comparing apples to oranges because the target audiences' are certainly different
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As others have already said, this type of "announcement" seems to come out every console cycle, major gaming push, or "insert some technological/software advancement that John C. Dvorak commented on".
He only sees his world through the eyes of a/(his) iPad, IPhone, iPod, and cellphone user. He is only noticing and paying attention to a microcosm of what is actually available. Now if he talked about the saturation of military shooters I might agree--although I would still think these games will sell; as they have always done well. He sees exactly what he wishes to see. While I do have to agree that it is nice to pay a different price for games, apparently he hasn't tried Steam yet, or he would realize that every point he is making falls flat as this has been happening FOR YEARS on the PC and XBox 360 and their arcade and more importantly their user-made games.
Steam, XBox 360's arcade and independent games, the same for the Playstation, and Nintendo's re-releases of classics all do well. Then there is the little Behemoth called the DS. I think his "The PC is dead..." equivalent comment will pan out to show that it's utter crap. As these same points have been brought up hundreds of times before, with all of them falling flat on their face.
Something witty goes here.
How about game where there's a nuclear reactor heating up and you have to lob barrels of water (or icebergs for a powerup) at it to cool it down?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sometimes people just want simple mindless games like Angry Birds, games that they can play on there train ride to work. But, (and big but), I'm sure as hell not going to spend my Sunday's at home playing angry birds instead of a gaming console. So basically, two different use case, not rocket science.
Much as a lot of adults buy these flash-type games, so that we can play them on our iPads, phones, PDAs or whatever to while away a few hours sat on the train to work or stuck in a hotel room on business, they will never replace the 'traditional' game market.
When I get home and have a bit of time to myself I won't sit on the settee with my phone screen - I'll fire up my desktop PC with its 26" HD screen and play a real game.
Also, there's no way on earth I'm going to let my young kids play games on my £600+ touch-screen phone - they can use the Wii or X-Box - then the worst damage they are going to do if they drop a controller or get sticky fingers on things is cost me £20 for a new controller. If they did the same to my phone I'd be stuck.
I play angry birds when on the shitter and on the tube to fill some time. That's it. It's quite good and I enjoy it but does he really think it will come close to the feeling I got when I first loaded up Operation Flashpoint all those years ago, and looked in awe at the morning sun and accurate star map, jumping in a chopper and shooting down on a town of tanks....no. It's cute, but won't replace the big machines. I'm a hardcore gamer and watching my house mate play GTA4 (ok ok I know it's a few years old now) and seeing the terrible glitches and no AA or AF just makes me love the PC games even more, I can't see gamers like me "settling" for Total War 5 on the ipad 4
Lol and angry birds is "innovative", games that cost 99p will never rival their console counterparts, it's a different market, the time and effort that goes in to developing something like Dragon Age 2, compared with angry birds is incomparable, and the standard is 1000x higher.
It is now official. Peter Vesterbacka has confirmed: consoles are dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered console community when IDC confirmed that console market share has dropped yet again, now down to a fraction of 1 percent of the gaming market. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that consoles have lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. consoles are collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by falling dead last in a self selected online straw poll by Peter Vesterbacka.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict the future of consoles. The hand writing is on the wall: consoles have a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for consoles because consoles are dying. Things are looking very bad for consoles As many of us are already aware, consoles continue to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Atari consoles are the most endangered of them all, having lost 100% of their core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time console developers Ralph Lippschitz and Betty Jo Underhill only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: consoles are dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Casual gaming leader Zynga states that there were 125 million new Farmville subscribers last year. How many users of Wii are there? Let's see. The number of Farmville versus Wii posts on Facebook is roughly in ratio of 39,000 to 1. Therefore there are about 125,000,000/39000 = 3205 Wii users. PSP posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Wii subscriptions. Therefore there are about 1600 users of the sony PSP. A recent article put Atari at about 50 percent of the PSP market. Therefore there are (3200+1600+8000=) 56005 console users. This is consistent with the number of Twitter posts.
Due to the troubles of Id software, abysmal sales and so on, Sega went out of business and was taken over by Nokia who sell another troubled platform. Now Nokia is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Consoles steadily declined in market share. Consoles are very sick and their long term survival prospects are very dim. If consoles are to survive at all they will be among gaming dilettante dabblers. Consoles continuec to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Consoles are dead.
That crippling bombshell sent console fans into a tailspin of mourning and denial. However, bad news poured in like a river of water.
--
BMO
I'm of course thinking about myman, moon-buggy, bastet, nethack, overkill, etc.
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I wish Bethesda would realise this, and stop making games with stupid interfaces for the consoles knowing us PC elder scrolls obssesives will just make our own better UI. I mean yeah we'll keep doing it but its a lot of work. and this new navigation UI seems to involve a whole lot of "What the hell does that mean?" type systems that cant be properly envisioned.
I don't even own a console (apart from the missus' Wii) but I doubt anyone would pay $50 (insert local currency as appropriate) for a copy of Angry Birds, good game though it may be - they are completely different markets and therefore comparison between the two is ludicrous.
Look at Mafia Wars and their ilk on Facebook (again, not something I play) - they've been going a year or two now but (not that I'm an expert) I've not seen the number of console games reduce particularly, so I don't think they've affected sales much. If anything, the people who play Mafia Wars tend to be those who have never gamed much anyway.
It all comes down to value for money, nothing more. I'm a middle-aged old fart PC gamer, I buy very few new games these days as I've more than enough classic & emulated games to fill my gaming needs - but put the word "Fallout" in the title of a new PC game and I'll be there queueing and frothing at the mouth with the rest of them because by the time I've replayed the games a few times with some additional free mods, I don't think I've ever encountered better value for money gaming in terms of entertainment time against cost.
I don't begrudge paying (the equivalent of) $50 for weeks of gaming time in Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas, in the same way that someone else getting an hour or two entertainment from a 99c copy of Angry Birds won't either.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Console games are dying... and YOU'RE KILLING THEM!!! YOU'RE KILLING THEM YOU HEARTLESS HEATHEN BASTARD! As God is my witness if you single-handedly kill Nintendo I will have my revenge!
Casual gaming is at an all-time high thanks to smartphones and social networking. These games all have a few things in common: they're easy, accessible.... and inferior in quality. In most cases, quite significantly and obviously inferior than their more dedicated PC/console/browser counterparts, with with a few exceptions inferior in general. And then there's Facebook games, which are little more than neurally-vacant time sinks often built upon poorly-disguised spyware. Those smartphone games that excel either embrace the abstract concepts that don't require better graphics or embrace the interface (for instance, Osmos on a touch-screen).
The game industry is becoming like Twitter... lots of people are talking, but only a few of them have something interesting to say worth following. The rest of them prattle on pointlessly or try desperately to be important for 15 minutes and cash in their virtual capital.
That being said, I view some of the big video game companies (EA in particular) with the same contempt I hold for major record labels, and the proliferation of smaller studios and amateur games will open up more avenues for talent and more room for ideas. The very big downside is obviously.... amateurish games, less depth and polish, less high-end innovation. And there's always the concern that the morons who "watch the trends" will decide the larger studios they control need to start making simpler games for the lowest common denominator (i.e. crap for the unwashed masses).
Last week it was PC gaming, then consoles again before that etc. Why can't people accept there are different kinds of gamers and a big enough market for everyone to get a taste. Some people only want to play 99c games on the train and that's fine, some people like the convenience of buying a console a couple of hundred dollars and having it work straight out of the box and are willing to pay a premium for games to do it and that is fine too. Other gamers want to play games at their highest graphical potential and to have more control over the game community and are willing to pay a lot for a PC able to do that and that is no less acceptable. Do they seriously think that gamers will suddenly drop the format and style they love because of some dire prognostication from a CEO or marketing exec about the future of the market? 'Why can't we all just get along'?
console? they just barely missed getting eaten?
they're planning a sort of 'cosmic candle' condolence thing for themselves/us. maybe we'll get to see it?
My 8 years old son is addicted to this angry birds game and another not console games so much. because he need not to buy any console to play that game. Not console game is easy to reach at cheap price or maybe free.. Couple day ago I bought Red Angry Birds Doll from http://www.firstkidsshop.com/angry-bird-toys/limited-edition-red-angry-birds-9-plush-doll-toy/ It might not lovely doll but my son love it very much cause he is Angry Birds Huge Fan!
Smart Trike Cow
You are absolutely right. And he's not even saying that the console model is "old hat".
He's just saying that Angry Birds is "innovative" because it's making money fast.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I keep reading these "reports" of the state of games in how they're "dying", and in reality everything is really cyclical. PC games will be big because some great innovatiion has emerged at one particular time (like the whole "rebirth of the PC" when World of Warcraft was suddenly showing up on everyone's computer). Consoles have always had that claim of the impetus to destroy the PC game, but it never really did. It just offered an alternative method of playing games. So people embraced consoles because that was where people were making games. Vesterbacka is another one of those parasitic developers who copied schema from one type of game, like the old Atari concepts that emerged from Missile Command, and then produced his "idea" for smartphones. But just because a bunch of people found it a gratuitous distraction while waiting for the bus doesn't somehow translate to a new paradigm of game playing for the future. It's a step up from a point and click game that requires no actual thinking. To compare that to some of the games out there that require hours and hours of investment in strategic thought and processing is ludicrous. Granted, in some point and click game it makes a bit of sense, but Vesterbacka is being a bit pretentious to think that what he does is in any way comparable to the higher end work of the discipline.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
Hardly.
"Hey everyone - lets all gather around and stare at this really cool (rehashed) game on my phone!"
Probably not going to light the party on fire with that one.
By the way - my kids like XScorch much better than Angry Birds. Crappy graphics and all.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Innovation in gameplay or in business model?
Angry Birds can sell for 99 cents because it is an extremely shallow game. Look at it, how does level 1 differ from level 10, level 100 or level 200? Aside from the introduction of a new bird to catapult it is essentially the same. This is by no means bad, and the game can be just as addictive, but it is far easier to create such a game with a small team and then crank out countless levels for you to play than to create a "traditional" game with varied gameplay that takes the same time to play.
And Rovio might be making a lot of money, but for me they are still a one-trick-pony. Until they show that they can create more games that are fun, addictive and immersive, I give little attention to what they claim about other developers and manufacturers.
I applaud them for turning tens of thousands of non-gamers into potential gamers and giving gaming a boost in popularity. I thank them for giving me a time-waster when sitting on the bus or waiting in a queue. But for one like me that see oneself as a gamer with varied taste, Angry Birds is nowhere like the games I like to play as a part of my hobby. It is kind of like comparing a greasy hot-dog at the vendor stand to a gourmet dinner at a fancy restaurant to a food-lover. Both can be good, but they are no substitute for each other and as far apart as one can be within the same genre.
We have Angry Geeks!
Wasn't it just last year all we heard was stories of hot the PC was dead as a gaming platform? Why must we keep declaring things dead. Just make your game on whatever platform and go on with your life. Stop with all this mallarky about all the other platforms being dead.
Notice how their referred to as "The people who make Angry Birds." and not Rovio. Their gonna milk that 40 MB game dry.
This guys game is only popular because Steve Jobs found a way to monetize flash games. Ever wonder why he won't allow Flash on his iPhone platform? It's because it would destroy this, and I mean the "Angry Birds," business model.
Angry Birds, while addictive, is nothing more than a competitor to other time-wasting desktop mini games like solitaire. Now I'm not knocking solitaire or the likes - I have wasted a good chunk of life playing games like this but to jump to the conclusion that console gaming is dying??? Is this guy completely out of touch with reality or just lacking the ability to do research on subject matter before speaking? Console gaming has never been as strong. If anything these mini games like angry birds are capturing the portion of the population who don't otherwise play on console due to violence, complexity of game play, pricing, etc.. If anything these games will be a gateway to heavier gaming. Ya know - kinda like marijuana leads to kneeling in a dark alley for all those fun hard drugs (sarcasm for the slow readers)
There is a social aspect to console gaming. That is what people tend to forget. No one huddles around an ipod to play angry birds. Most of my time playing Angry Birds is done so while sitting on a toilet. And that is not a joke. It's is more akin to readign a magazine than to having friends over to game.
You will NEVER see any A-Title game or blockbuster movie push the envelope. The risk is simply way too high. You know where you have to look for innovation? Flash games and YouTube. Yes, Flashgames and YouTube. Why? Because there projects can and do happen that have no budget and no ROI concerns. Do what you think is fun and see if others agree. That's pretty much it. Even Penny-Games for Mobiles isn't the innovation ground, and neither is "Alternative" and "Independent" Movies. Even they already have the ROI breathing down their neck.
Innovation happens where the crowd rules. Do you think any music exec would have invested a dime in things like Autotune-the-News? Or a game studio dropped a penny on Tower Defense? Pennygames and "alternative" publishers picked both styles up for the single reason that the free version became popular. With both you could have gone to an indie publisher and got turned away without the obvious popularity they enjoy.
You will notice a "progression", though. There are thousands of games and movies produced without a ROI in mind, for the love of it, because someone wanted to play a game like this or hear a song like this themselves. One or two of them will be popular with others, and these ideas will then be picked up by indies and published. And if there's a chance that people would drop big bucks on a "polished" version of it, big studios will pick it up.
That's how "innovation" works today.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Console game will evolve, not die.
I really tire of people claiming that anything connected to a TV is going to die. Cable, blu-ray, consoles, etc, just because there has been some success in bringing similar content to non-TV devices. Sorry, I do not want to watch a shows on a 24" screen, I do not want to play a game on a 4" screen, I do not want to wait 24 minutes to download a low-def movie.
I agree that the day of the $60 video game are close to gone, but sorry, any claim that "traditional" hard core gaming is dying is a hugely ignorant statement.
If this guy thought console gaming was going to die, why did they whore out their game to PSN and XBox Live then (and did a shitty port at that).
Consoles will evolve. The latest generation introduce the idea of quick, easy to obtain, on demand access to casual games. They didn't abandon core gamers (well Nintendo did), but they offered supplemental gaming services. Hell, Sony and Microsoft were offering cheap casual games on their console long before Apple did.
I think the next generation of game consoles will be more open, integrating heavily into social networking and implementing their own "app" stores akin to iPhone and others, both Sony and Microsoft will tie into their mobile phone divisions more heavily and there will be larger access for "independents" to write and release casual games on those platforms. But the key here is they will still provide a platform where "REAL" game developers can push the boundaries of game design and hard core gamers can enjoy a platform dedicated to gaming, rather then companies dumping games flinging raster images at other raster images.
I can't understand why anybody that calls themselves a gamer is not interested in playing state of the art games in FULL HD on a large screen 3D televisions. Sure, the market may not be as large as those trying to match colored crystals, but then gaming innovation will not be driven by color matching games, period.
There are over 200 million console users in this generation of game consoles, that is not an insignificant market. Just because a million twits played Farmville for 5 minutes does not constitute a revolution in gaming.
...the president of a major bicycle manufacturing company said that cars are dead.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
"Vesterbacka said that innovation wasn't coming from large development firms like EA and Ubisoft, but from smaller, more nimble developers like his own"
- EA and Ubisoft knows what people will buy, and if they turn out the same game with a "2" on it, people will flock to buy it. Until they don't, big firms don't need to innovate.
"Compared to mobile titles like Angry Birds that run for 99 cents, games on large consoles hover around fifty dollars"
- Clearly there is no difference in lenght, complexity, depth or thought between Angry Birds and a blockbuster game like Call of Duty.
"Vesterbacka went on the offensive today against his console counterparts, arguing that the model pursued by companies like Nintendo is 'dying.'"
- He should recomment on this after March 27th.
Read more: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles_comments/122558/20110314/rovio-exec-says-console-is-dead.htm#ixzz1Gg8Cfbqu
At a purely economic level he is correct.
This story probably comes about because it was announced early this week that Angry Birds made 75 MILLION dollars and used 125 thousand to develop.
Name any game anywhere developed on anything that comes even close to that kind of profit. None. Maybe Farmville? Yet another indicator, though that would also bolster PC, but not console.
Now if you are a maker of games, or an investor of makers of games, what kind of games do you want to be making? The kind that cost 30 Million to make and might make you 50 Million, if it doesn't tank. A MMO that costs 300 Million, also with potential to tank. Or a 140k game that might make you close to 100 Million? Extremely low risk, and high reward. If the 140k game tanks, who cares. Make a couple dozen more and hope one doesn't.
So simply from that perspective, you are going to draw a LOT of attention, and industry to move in that direction. Will it spell the end for consoles? No. But it might reduce the number of shops making games for those platforms. Long term this could had repercussions on 3rd party developers.
IMO the highest purpose of consoles is local multiplayer.
Home theater PC hardware is perfectly capable of this too: HDTV + USB hub + gamepads. So why don't more PC games have an HTPC mode, apart from emulators of classic arcade games? Is the lack of HTPC games solely due to the lack of HTPCs and vice versa?
But there are a lot of other Slashdot users who claim in comments that the sort of local multiplayer seen in games like Bomberman series and Super Smash Bros. series is overrated, instead preferring that video game developers concentrate on local area network multiplayer. They like having an entire 720p to 1080p monitor for each player rather than one 360p quadrant of a 720p split screen (or, worse, the 240p in one quadrant of a Wii split screen) and being able to conceal their location from opponents who would screen-peek. They claim PC games tend to be so much cheaper than console games that mom can afford to buy two copies. Some who prefer Internet play tell stories of their adult friends either A. not being available for play dates or B. living so far away that the airfare to play a local multiplayer game with them would be cost prohibitive. What if anything do you say to those claims?
The console is plugged in to the TV so I can play social games
And I take it FarmVille isn't a social game by your definition.
Ipse dixit
I wonder what the Angry Birds Executive of ripping off a common flash game idea from the 90's would have to say about this?
In the not too distant future though, cell phones and tablets will likely support wireless HDMI and the ability to drive full-sized HD screens while functioning as a controller
Recent cell phones tend to be lacking in the physical buttons department, and touch doesn't really work as well because the gap between the phone and the TV is far bigger than, say, the gap between the screens on a Nintendo DS, and the player can't tell where his hands are positioned on the screen. So developers will have to limit their games to those genres that can work with just the accelerometer and one virtual button for each thumb.
Canceled? They've never announced ME2. DICE recently stated it is focusing on Battlefield 3, but never said that Mirror's Edge is dead as an IP.
Anyone who thinks a console is somehow "better" than a PC should probably not be around computers at all.
For players of fighting games and other genres designed for gamepads and a shared screen, a console really is better than a PC because of 1. the general incompatibility of TVs with PC video until 2006 when HDTV took off, and 2. the dearth of off-the-shelf PCs specifically designed to sit next to a TV-sized monitor. For these reason, games in these genres tend to be ported to multiple consoles but not the PC. Look at Capcom's Street Fighter IV: unlike the console versions, the PC version never got the "Super" update due to poor sales. So if you're convinced that "[t]here shouldn't even be an argument", how do you plan to increase adoption of "media center PCs" or "home theater PCs" to get more major-label games in these genres ported to PC?
It's hard to take a guy serious who is catering to the lightweight, "casual" gaming market. His niche are people who want throwaway games who will move on to the next fad.
Real games, games that tell stories, games that have years of development put into them and give years of playability back, have been and remain on consoles, and to a lesser extent PCs now that porting console games to a PC is much less work than it used to be.
Peter has flirted with brief, temporary popularity, and now thinks he is on top of the world. As a guy who's been playing videogames for three decades, console gaming STILL isn't dead despite people claiming every year is the last.
In the real world where people buy games that have value, Angry Birds would be worthless. It's a fun game, no doubt, but it's just the same kind of casual shovelware that countless others put out. Nobody would ever shell out $40 to buy it for their PS3 or 360. I'm glad his company is successful, but he is in no position to say console gaming (or PC gaming) is dead.
I'm sure it's just me who missed it, but where exactly is it Angry Birds did their contribution of innovation to the rest of us?
You know where you have to look for innovation? Flash games and YouTube. Yes, Flashgames and YouTube.
Even SWF games have to have an ROI even if only to justify $700 for Adobe Flash CS*. Or what environment do you recommend for one to get started making an SWF game without Adobe Flash CS*?
Do you think any music exec would have invested a dime in things like Autotune-the-News?
No, because of the litigious stick-up-the-behind attitude that some major copyright owners have about their works. A news station could see a lot more dollar signs suing a notable record label than whoever does Autotune-the-News, especially when it's one of the network news giants like ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, or CNN, all of which are owned by movie studios.
A salesman claiming that the competition is dying off.
What an insightful posting.
That is the most wildly inaccurate remark i've heard. What he doesn't get is that as new consoles come out, the associated games are going to continue to improve. Kids and adults will have NO CHOICE but to keep buying and buying the stuff for the always improving enhanced experiences. Phones will never compete - except for the bathroom arcade experience, or the "i just don't have anything else to do" experience. They can't compete. No kid or adult would say, I don't need my Xbox anymore because i have Angry Birds experiences. Delusional....
I bet he would love for the Consoles to dye out. but that will NEVER happen with in the next 30 years.
Just like what Warcraft did to the Warhammer world. At this point they're pretty divergent, but I'm never sure whether to be said or just bemused every time someone accuses a Warhammer game of ripping of Warcraft's world/setting/creatures/etc. Even heard it once in reference to Warhammer miniatures.
This guy is a marketing/business guy.
The innovations he's going to care about in the game itself... there's nothing about angry birds as a game that would qualify.
It's the business model. So yeah, low priced cell phone games will be huge in terms of adoption, doubtless rivaling and probably eclipsing consoles and PC gaming because most everyone has a phone on them at all times.
Profitability, meh, who knows. But he's resting on a wild success story so he projects into the future based on that.
But anyways, hats off to him as a marketing guy, he got us talking about Angry Birds.
Yes, consoles are dying...this isn't a new thing. They die, and are reborn years later as the "Next Gen" version. IE. PS, PS2, PS3...PS4. Its an iterative process that will live on for generations.
Can I just use this opportunity so say that Angry Birds is overrated crap? It requires no skills, success or failure is random, and the difficulty level is schizophrenic: some levels are mind-bogginly easy, some require precision that makes NASA soil their pants. And some guy who made it has the arrogance to criticize other games? Hah.
True, they have market share, but they've always been alienating touch-me-and-I-sue-you proprietary devices with all the appeal of a cyanide milkshake. You can't mod them. You can't download and play user-created levels on them. You can't install Linux on them, unless it's for really short periods of time and then the manufacturer changes their mind and starts suing anyone who tries. In short, manufacturers of consoles have always seen their customers as their enemy, and have always made it clear that they do. Consoles were doomed the instant that they were viewed and constructed as DRM-capable devices, because that meant that they would inevitably be replaced by anything that was easier and friendlier to play games on. So, it's no surprise that it's back to the PC for the next round of games.
How many units of Call of Duty: Black Ops sold at $60 a pop? Anyway I think games on mobile devices and phones will spell the death for hand held game devices like nintendo and psp. What was that episode of star trek next generation where everyone on the ship was addicted to a game except Wesley? Thats what games like angry birds reminds me of. But really why are the games on phones and mobile devices so popular? Because people are stupid enough to believe the techno hype surrounding these gadgets, brainwashed into thinking they NEED them, and at the end of the day dont do much with them and justify their impulse purchase by playing a mind numbing game. Can we have Wesley come and save us all? Or at least explain to me why I spent $40 on this funky ipad cover with magnets?
people on ludes should not drive
They are two different kinds of execs.
You have an exec of an Indie game which probably never expected to make so much money.
An EA exec on the other hand is employed to get the maximum money for the shareholders. More often then not experimental games don't make as much revenue as the mainstream ones. You mess up, you get fired. So it is safer for the exec to release another NFL/FPS/Sims game then it is to make something new.
Looking at the economics (in terms of motivations and the psychology of situations), the basic question can also be broken down to which group the exec is trying to please.
This is a gross oversimplification, but it does begin to illustrate why so many corporations seem to care exactly squat about their customer bases, whereas smaller and medium-sized privately-owned companies tend to pay more attention to what people buying their products and/or services actually want.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Angry Birds Exec -Wishes- Console Games Were Dying
There are some very innovative titles for the PS3 on the PS store and they are not very expensive either. I thought the game called "Flower" was very innovative and enjoyable. I have purchased the big titles for my PS3 that cost $59 and I have bought a lot of games from the PS store. I also use my PS3 for a jukebox and NETFLIX viewer. Occasionally I'll stick a blu-ray disc in there and dig mightily on the uncompressed audio. The total console experience is changing and it is not accurate to say that console = big game from EA or Ubisoft. I also like having the device attached to my stereo receiver. It makes it feel more like a traditional appliance that looks good in an array of other A/V equipment.
I love Angry Birds. Yesterday I took this energy shot called DynaPep and stayed up all night playing. I found this coupon code 10MAR11 that I used at http://www.evolutionnutritionproducts.com
i like this
I suppose that is why the casual technology market is booming so fast. One word, Portability. You can't find that in a heavy laptop or desktops. Peopel want to be flexible and find enjoyment in many things. Most people like to do a variety of interactive things. Consoles allow this. Aside from fps games, Nintendo has always been notorious on this aspect. Microsoft and Sony took the hint and now they are as well. A console last roughly longer than that and only costs small extensions in between. Its also more portable and runs on a TV, which can be used for other entertainment purposes. On the other hand a serious gaming on a pc requires a good video card and numerous upgrades every 2 years at the least. The majority of its setup only revolves around a keyboard and mouse. Not everyone wants to keep up their hardware or care for a ~8 lb laptop. Finally, Angry Birds is hardly a graphic intensive game. B.c the ipad supports it and can manage to run NFS doesn't make it even comparable to a gaming system, let alone pc/laptop. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. On that note I'd like to say I do enjoy Angry birds, and also like console and computer games.